Currently, customers and businesses complete transactions in a very manual, informal, rushed, often incomplete fashion except for the signed document. At the center of such transactions are contracts and disclosures. An example of such a transaction is the closing of a vehicle sale at an automotive dealership, although many other types of transactions are contemplated herein. Contracts and disclosures are manually prepared prior to the transaction typically using pre-printed forms, are manually presented to the consumer in a paper format, and are manually executed by the parties by initialing and signing various locations. During this execution of the contract, it is common that a lot of informal communication occurs that is not recorded or preserved. Because these documents are often long, complicated, utilize small print, and depend upon hard to understand legal language, the business employee managing the transaction often endeavors to simplify and speed up the process by explaining the content verbally. Invariably, such verbal explanations lack the formal content and legally required disclosures in the written document and no record is kept of the explanations to prove otherwise. Additionally, the business employee often is not adequately trained to explain the contract and disclosures, thus leading to misrepresentations, frequent disputes about what was or was not disclosed, and generally poor customer satisfaction. Because no record of this manual and verbal informal transaction is made, the business is compelled to spend a lot of time and money training the employees to represent products, contracts, and disclosures in an accurate, consistent, and fair manner. Even then, misrepresentation, misunderstanding, and disputes can and do occur.
In a society dominated by ever increasing legal complexity—agreements required to document transactions between parties, especially of the preprinted variety, are difficult to understand and are frequently ‘explained’ or ‘disclosed’ by legally unqualified individuals. Additionally, preprinted paper documents are prone to revisions that either become out of date or improperly used or completed. At the same time, many transactions, such as consumer installment loans, now require even more specific explanation and disclosures due to increasingly restrictive and complex legal regulations. Also, agreements increasingly are being disclosed to individuals from whom English is not their first language or where cultural differences make verbal requests for simpler explanations difficult and unlikely.
Clearly, providing qualified legal advice in a multitude of languages isn't practical or even possible with the volume of transactions that take place on a daily basis. Even where transactions are properly disclosed and documented, disagreements can later arise where a party claims something did or did not take place relying on recollection and/or completed documents to ‘refresh’ poor memories. Further, even as technology is more frequently used to eliminate the problems of paper-based documentation, that same technology introduces yet a new generation of problems and legal challenges. Examples of electronically created issues are authentication of the parties, verification of technical abilities of signatories, and even documenting the willingness of parties to accept and use technology. Examples of some of the new regulations include the E-Sign Law, Federal Reserve Regulation B, Universal Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. Lastly, technological alternatives to paper-based methodologies require increasingly complex networks, storage and retrieval methods, and present a host of security and fraud issues. There is a need to address these and other problems and shortcomings.
The prior art includes various attempts, devices, software packages, and methodologies for addressing bits and pieces of the formidable problems and shortcomings inherent in historical and traditional ways of managing a commercial transaction. In the automotive industry, for instance, software packages such as an e-contracting system known as “Dealer Track” are used to help arrange financing and electronically capture signatures for loan and lease contracts at automotive dealerships. For the most part, these systems implement web-based applications on a traditional computer used by automotive dealership personnel to obtain, print out, present, and/or have executed the variety of documents and disclosures involved in the sale and financing of a vehicle. In some cases where signatures are captured electronically, these systems may incorporate an electronic signature pad for capturing and digitizing a purchaser's signature at various junctures during the transaction, but the pad is merely a blank area where a user signs to have his or her signature captured. However, much of the process is still paper based, the transaction is not captured and archived for later review or confirmation, and lacks insurable consistency from transaction to transaction.
More specifically, the Dealer Track e-contracting software mentioned above is a web-based application that prints out contracts and disclosures on paper, which are then reviewed by a purchaser and perhaps explained by a salesman in the traditional way. A purchaser then indicates his understanding and agreement by signing a stand alone blank electronic signature pad. A computer captures the signature, applies it electronically to the document to which it pertains, and prints out the document again with the electronic signature applied. Clearly, such a methodology retains many of the problems of traditional paper documents, and also introduces problems of its own. For instance, paper is still the medium of presentation and explanation, the problems with inaccurate and incomplete verbal explanations still exists, and the paper documents are required to be printed twice. In addition, the purchaser has no assurance that the signature that is scribed on the electronic signature pad is in fact being paired with or properly applied on the document for which it is intended, which is confusing and can lead to misunderstanding and disputes.
The prior art also generally includes electronic pads typical of those found at retail establishments. These pads may include a card swipe slot and a touch screen and are coupled to the cash register, and thereby to a retail establishment's central accounting computer. Such electronic pads are used to allow a customer to pay for merchandise with a debit or credit card by swiping the card, confirming a transaction amount, selecting among various options such as “cash back,” and confirming the transaction by signing the screen. The customer's signature is digitized as authorization to charge his or her credit card. Such systems are rudimentary and provide very little in the way of disclosure management and nothing in the way of contract document management and transaction archiving. These systems are used for the simplest of transactions where there is a single agreement with a single signature approval response, no options from which to choose, and little or no room for misunderstanding or erroneous disclosure.
The prior art further includes devices and methods for digitizing portions of a paper transaction. These devices and methods include, for example, digitizer pads and position-coded paper for use with a scanning electronic pen. With digitizer pads, a piece of paper to be written or drawn upon can be secured atop the pad and then written or drawn on with a traditional or special pen. The underlying digitizer pad has a sensor array that continuously detects the position of the pen tip and digitizes writing, check marks, or signatures of the individual filling out the paper form. This information can then be transferred to an electronic version of the paper form for electronic storage and retrieval. U.S. Pat. No. 6,906,694 of Iwamoto et al. and assigned to Wacom Co. of Japan discloses an example of a prior art digitizer pad.
In contrast to digitizer pads, position-coded paper solutions include paper documents that are printed with a background of small, almost imperceptable, dots arrayed in unique recognizable patterns. An electronic pen is used to fill out the document. As the electronic pen moves over the surface of the paper, a small camera in its tip “watches” the dot pattern moving under the pen. From the dot pattern, it can be determined where on the paper the pen tip is at any moment. This electronic information, then, can be used to recreate the motions of the pen and thereby digitize all information applied in writing to the paper by the user of the pen. In some cases, the electronic pen is connected to a computer for near real time digitization of written information, and in other cases a docking station is provided that retrieves stored information from the pen after use to recreate and digitize writing previously applied to the coded surface paper. An example of this technology may be found in U.S. Pat. No. 6,966,495 of Lyggaard et al, which is assigned to Anoto AB. Also, the LogiTech 102 Digital Writing System available from LogiTech Designs of Fremont, Calif. is an example of a prior art digitizer pen input system of this type.
The prior art also includes devices and methodologies for recording all or a portion of a financial transaction. Everyone is familiar, for example, with ATM machines that include video cameras. The cameras usually are positioned behind a glass plate and capture a video image of each person who approaches and uses the ATM machine. Such systems generally are very rudimentary in that the video is not linked electronically to the transaction and, if needed, is recovered by a time search of the video data. ATM machines also generally include only button initiated responses and are not suitable for transactions requiring even a small amount of sophistication.
The prior art, of course, has long included paper and computer menus, which can be used to present options and/or disclosures to a user, such as the purchaser of a vehicle, in a consistent way. However, there is no assurance or confirmation with such menus that a customer actually reads them, or that if they are read, that they are understood. In fact, it has been observed that many people when presented with a menu of disclosures or options does not read them at all. This can be detrimental in a complex transaction such as the sale and purchase of a vehicle where, in many cases, the salesperson skips quickly through such menus and they are not read. Many disputes arise later when it is claimed by a purchaser that certain required disclosures or options were not adequately presented during the transaction.
Still further, the prior art includes tablet and laptop personal computers (PCs) and other electronic devices for general use in a wide variety of applications. Some more recent computers are provided with a fingerprint reader that is used for identification and verification of a user attempting to log on to the system. To the best of the inventor's knowledge, however, the fingerprint readers of such machines are not used for any other purposes. For example, they are not used as a general input device that can be integrated into software applications to, for example, indicate acceptance or rejection of an option or proposition while simultaneously verifying identity. No machine is known that incorporates more than one fingerprint reader. Fingerprint readers also are provided as stand alone input devices for computers that can be connected, for instance, via USB port. Such readers traditionally are used for identification and log-on purposes, just as the built-in readers of more recent laptop computers.
A wide variety of electronic F&I (finance and insurance) management systems exist in the prior art, particularly for use by automotive dealerships and banks, one such system having been offered for many years by Coin Financial Systems located in the State of Georgia, U.S.A. Such systems typically are centered around an extensive data base of various forms, legally required disclosures, promotional offers, add-on package presentations, and the like. While these systems aid in organizing and selecting appropriate forms, they nevertheless are rather unsophisticated and do not themselves direct and manage a transaction. Further, there have been no provisions for insuring that a customer is actually presented with all required options, proper disclosures and documents, or that they are read and understood. Transactional archiving is limited to raw data and/or documentation with no audit trail to insure sales persons acted appropriately.
Increasingly, tablet computers are being used by professionals such as doctors in their offices to input information about patients in real time. The information is then catalogued, indexed, and organized for easy access and cross referencing with other data bases such as a patient's history, allergy records, current medications, and the like. However, such uses only automate an otherwise manual process and are not used to control, manage, or aid in the transaction between two individuals.
From the forgoing, it can be seen that there has been progress in the simplification and automation of financial and other types of commercial transactions, particularly since the advent of the personal computer. That progress has been generally limited to administrative support of a single user. However, there is still a need for a comprehensive transaction automation system for complex commercial transactions such as the closing of a sale, lease, and/or financing of a vehicle at an automotive dealership. Such a system should have the capability to control and manage the entire transaction, including the presentation of legal disclosures, contracts, lease agreements, financing arrangements, and the various options related thereto to a buyer. It should generally provide for a highly interactive shared workspace between all parties to the transaction and positively identify and verify these parties. This should be done in a completely consistent and proven manner to insure that all information is provided to the buyer utilizing best practices. The system should insure that each document presented to the buyer is read and understood by the buyer in order to prevent later disputes involving a buyer's claim that certain terms, conditions, and/or disclosures were not provided. The entire transaction should be recorded and archived for potential use at a later date to reconstruct exactly what occurred during the original transaction. The system also should integrate automatically with third party participants, such as finance companies and insurance companies, so that transactions have the benefit of real time accurate information upon which decisions are to be made. It is to the provision of a transaction automation, real time transaction logging, and archival system that provides these and many more beneficial features and advantages that the present invention, in its various embodiments described below, is primarily directed.